This essay reveals the travels of Ibadi scholars (ulama) over the longue durée and their interactions within the Sahara and the urban centers of North Africa and the Middle East. Observed from the analytical framework of colonial Algeria, these intellectual, commercial and material exchanges (letters, manuscripts and printed books) could be interpreted as marginal. On another scale, they allow us to uncover transregional and transimperial connections, which are still underestimated. These migrations and exchanges sketch an ongoing space and traffic flows which span the chronological threshold of the colonial era. They invalidate the common vision of a localized Islam and they denaturalize the Algerian colonial framework by showing, among Algerians, relationships to space that extended beyond those created in a colonial environment.